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19 April, 2011During a mission to Conackry, Guinea early in April 2011, a representative of IMF Africa met with union leadership and shop stewards of Forum intersyndical des societes minieres et industrielles de Guinée (FISMIG) and visited some of the organized plants in order to better understand the labour movement in Guinea and challenges facing workers and the union.
Guinea: Located in West Africa, Guinea has abundant natural resources including a significant share of the world's known bauxite reserves. It is also rich in gold, diamonds and other metals. Despite this a legacy of autocratic rulers has made Guinea one of the poorest nations in the world. Trade unions have been at the forefront calling for political reform in Guinea since the mid 2000's and have faced violent crackdowns by government, during one such strike in 2007 resulted in over 100 fatalities. The trade unions were successful in motivating actions to support demands for political transformation and in November 2010, after democratically held elections, Alpha Conde, supported by the labour movement, was declared the official victor.
Union plant committees in the mining and industry sectors created FISMIG in 1994. It is an independent trade union platform organizing across the country which brings together shop stewards and workers from mine and industry sector to discuss challenges faced by workers and unions identifying common issues and common approaches to deal with problems. Issues like job security, workers unity, minimum wage, social security, precarious work, trade and investment in the mine and industry are discussed in this forum. The union has political and bargaining power to influence government and employers policies, through the full involvement of their membership base of 50, 000, 5,000 of whom are metalworkers.
Despite political unrest and the many problems that plague Guinea's economy, foreign investors have established their presence in the mining sector. South African mining companies De Beers and AngloGold Ashanti operate mines in the country. the world's largest aluminium producer, Russia's Rusal gets 40% of its bauxite needs from Guinea. Vale and Rio Tinto are also present with iron ore interests.
There are more developments planned for Guinea that will increase the number of metalworkers. A joint venture between Canadian listed Global Alumina Corp (33.3%) BHP Billiton (33.3%), Dubai Aluminium Company Limited and Mubadala Development Company PJSC (sharing the remaining one third stake), plans to develop the largest ever greenfield alumina refinery project in Guinea. Plans are to develop a 3.6 million metric tons per annum steady state capacity alumina refinery that will be in the cheapest 10% of world alumina production. Together with a proposed refinery of Alcoa and Alcan, these refineries are claimed together to represent the largest private investment in Sub Saharan Africa since the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline.
However, whether these developments will go ahead without changes to their shareholding now is highly questionable. President Alpha Conde in January 2011 announced plans to hold a stake of at least a third in mining projects to ensure Guinea benefits from the country's bauxite and iron ore riches.